


Life Is Not Horseshoes

by peoriapeoria



Series: Fitter of the Species [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gender, Gender or Sex Swap, Loss, Multi, Nostalgia, Trauma, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/pseuds/peoriapeoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers thinks about chances he didn't take and the big ones he did. Or, what to think about after you've told someone you're interested but it's complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Is Not Horseshoes

**Author's Note:**

> There are some alluded to events that could have happened but didn't, which would have required warnings if they had. The Major Character Deaths are all canon, and one was Steve Rogers.
> 
> Steve Rogers exited the Vita-Ray pod an Amazon, but he's still using internal male pronouns.

Bucky had kept setting up double dates. That wasn't how things had started. Steve stopped growing at fifteen, which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been tiny before puberty. His voice sounded like a man, but he would look like a kid until he got old. Unless. Bucky switched to double dates when Steve balked at the pitying floozies.

His father had come back from the War, his lungs scarred by the gas. His mother died unable to draw her next breath. When the asthma came, Steve had feared the same thing would happen to him, that he'd suffocate. No dame needed that trouble.

He had looked like a kid but he wasn't one; he was older than Bucky. Steve was a bit bitter, though he thought he'd covered well, when Bucky...

He wasn't just envious. Sometimes he didn't think of dames.

Agent Carter, Peggy, was unlike any woman he'd ever known. When she dropped Hodge, it was glorious. There was no reason for her to notice him, and he'd been pretty embarrassed when the grenade turned out a dud. And then there was the flag.

The ride in the jeep, her smile for him had been the sweetest moments. She talked to him before the procedure. She cried out for him, as the process tore him apart. That was to be their moment, because when the chamber opened Steve was no longer a man.

Stark was a rake, though he wasn't the only one getting a peep. Steve could accept it was a sight to behold. He drew some studies; his poses never looked right. They were accurate, beautiful, but they weren't 'right'.

Would Peggy have looked right, her clothes off?

Steve would have thought he was going mad, except the chorus girls were raunchy and apparently his reactions were just something women had and hid. He did a brisk trade in drawing men for them and pin-ups of them for their beaus.

And then he was getting Bucky, lifting him from that table, fighting their way out. Schmidt. Schmidt didn't want to kill him, Belle. Zola divided the gangway. Steve got Bucky to cross, leaped across after him.

When he saw Bucky cleaned up at the bar, he understood his mother marrying his father. Even after Bucky tried his best lines on Peggy, Steve wanted things that couldn't be. There was a war to win.

After the train, all Steve could see was Bucky falling. He couldn't stop seeing it, and drinking didn't help. Peggy still was beautiful, and that didn't help either.

Howard had tried convincing him there was another way with the plane. Howard that had managed to be anywhere else since the train. Neither were thinking clearly, but Steve's plan left the Eastern Seaboard safe, guaranteed.

Bucky had been gone for a lifetime. Steve waited for Bruce to decide if he'd give them a chance.


End file.
